Final Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) Nomination Predictions

Erik Anderson December 10, 2017

I know it says ‘final’ up there but it probably should just say ‘official’ since my mind keeps changing as I write this and the moment I click ‘publish’ it will again.

It’s a stacked year here and none more than in the guild’s top category Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. There’s only room for five but the number of realistic contenders double that. As I mentioned on the most recent podcast, I look at my top 5 and the others in the running and I can take swap virtually any one out for another in. Getting this top five right will be quite a feat. As I’ve talked about before, screeners are crucial for this group. The SAG nom comm is made up of 2200 randomly selected members from a pool of about 160,000. They come from all over the country, not just LA and New York so hoping in a taxi for a screening and Q&A for a film just isn’t an option for many so a studio must get out screeners and into the hands of these voters. When you’re talking about a late December release like The Post, Phantom Thread and All the Money in the World it’s even more important.

Something that’s been circling for a few weeks now is that many regional critics groups have yet to even see some releases, specifically Call Me By Your Name, so they can’t vote for it. That’s Sony Classics’ dropping the ball and not getting those screeners out. Worse, there are reports that CMBYN screeners that actually did go out have a glitch and don’t play. Not good. Then there’s the fact that the cast is so small. After denying La La Land last year, presumably because the film was a two-hander and less ‘cast’ based, that could happen here. Will it even show up at SAG if that’s the case? We all know how important it is to get that top nom if you want to be in the Best Picture Oscar race so a miss here would be devastating. I do know this, something will get multiple individual nominations and lose out on Cast and something will get in Cast with just one, or possibly no, individual nom.

The thing that guides me most is the still intact SAG Cast nom tied to a Best Picture win. La La Land’s miss here should have been a stronger push for us to see that, despite the love from the Golden Globes and those record-tying 14 Oscar nominations, that the film was hobbled. It didn’t even matter that Moonlight didn’t win the SAG, only that it was nominated. If you’re predicting Dunkirk to win Best Picture, you need to have it here. If you think that either Get Out or Lady Bird is winning Original Screenplay and BP, or that Call Me By Your Name is winning Adapted Screenplay and BP, then you’ve gotta have it here. Those screenplay Oscar wins are tied closer to Best Picture than Best Director now. But, stats and history is always there to be broken or changed.

This whole thing is a big puzzle and we’re just trying to fit the pieces in.

The nominations for the 24th Screen Actors Guild Awards will be revealed on December 13, 2017. Here are my final predictions and my predictions from November 17 for comparison.

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Get Out
Lady Bird
Mudbound
The Post
The Shape of Water

In the running: Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread
Jake Gyllenhaal – Stronger
Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out
Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour

In the running: James Franco – The Disaster Artist, Tom Hanks – The Post, James McAvoy – Split, Denzel Washington – Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie – I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird
Meryl Streep – The Post

In the running: Jessica Chastain – Molly’s Game, Judi Dench – Victoria and Abdul, Brooklynn Prince – The Florida Project, Emma Stone – Battle of the Sexes

Outstanding Performance by Male Actor in a Supporting Role
Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project
Armie Hammer – Call Me By Your Name
Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Patrick Stewart – Logan
Michael Stuhlbarg – Call Me By Your Name

In the running: Idris Elba – Molly’s Game, Richard Jenkins – The Shape of Water, Jason Mitchell – Mudbound, Mark Rylance – Dunkirk, Michael Shannon – The Shape of Water

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Mary J. Blige – Mudbound
Holly Hunter – The Big Sick
Allison Janney – I, Tonya
Laurie Metcalf – Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer – The Shape of Water

In the running: Hong Chau – Downsizing, Tiffany Haddish – Girls Trip, Catherine Keener – Get Out, Tatiana Maslany – Stronger

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
Dunkirk
The Greatest Showman
Logan
War for the Planet of the Apes
Wonder Woman

In the running: Detroit, Blade Runner 2049, Hostiles, Jumanji, Justice League

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.